


Shatter

by NavyGreen



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Battle Of Five Armies, Angst, Bilbo Baggins Dies, Dragon Sickness, During The Hobbit, Gen, Gold Sick Thorin, Gold Sickness (Tolkien), Heavy Angst, Hurt Bilbo Baggins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23529058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NavyGreen/pseuds/NavyGreen
Summary: Bilbo discovers how deep Gold Sickness runs within the King Under the Mountain.
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins & Thorin Oakenshield, Bilbo Baggins & Thorin's Company, Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Comments: 12
Kudos: 191





	Shatter

Thorin was a ghost.

He wandered the cold, empty halls of Erebor with little more than the whisper of his cloak against stone. The crown of Durin rested upon his brow – brilliant in its craftmanship and beyond compare. But its edges were harsh, angled, like the blade of a sword or the tip of an arrow. They cut down Thorin’s temples, angled his cheekbones and framed the stark line of his mouth. His eyes were purpled. Hollowed. They stared almost unblinking at the treasures around him. The crown kept his grey-streaked hair from his eyes but was unable to tame it, keep it at bay. It sat tangled and frazzled around his head.

Torches, placed high upon the tall columns of Erebor, remained unlit, continuing into another day of disuse. But the treasury did not need such light; the Hoard of Thrór glowed more than bright enough.

Thorin’s boots – a new set, steel-toed – slid into the embrace of coins and gems and trinkets alike as he walked among it.

Bilbo Baggins watched him from above, eyes darkened and red.

_Your feet are not the only parts of you that have sunk into the gold_ , he thought.

Something within the Hobbit struggled to look upon the Dwarf – something newly bloomed, but groaning under pressure from all sides. Like an apple, with thick fingers compressing it until it dribbled, skin bruised and tender.

Bilbo swallowed, though it came thick. He struggled a lot, these days.

Hobbits weren’t meant for mountains, for war or Orcs or _gold_. They were meant for armchairs. For books, and gardens.

But those were far behind. And the world, and future, was ahead.

Below him, Thorin paused in his prowling. The light on his crown – material and fake _and you are not the Thorin I met in Bag End_ – glinted as his head tilted up, eyes searching-

Bilbo flinched away, spinning on his heel and disappearing behind a grand Ereborian column. It was cold against his back despite the blackened signs of scorching stretching up its sides.

His lungs captured his breath and grasped it tight.

Silence echoed throughout the chamber.

Then; the whispering of coin against coin. Bilbo dared a peek over the side of the walkway.

A wave of treasure, littered with gems and jewelleries, rolled across its kin before slowing, and settling. The crunching of footsteps continued.

Something in Bilbo’s chest eased, as if the ropes of a ship had been loosened. Not by much, but his lungs appreciated the room.

A flash of Smaug came to Bilbo, and heat – whether real or a memory – coloured his face and neck.

Below him, Thorin continued his hunt.

Bilbo, with the pain in his chest and the burns on his heels, couldn’t tell who was worse.

There were Men and Elves at their gates.

And behind them, Bilbo could only see doom. And death.

And while the Dwarves, too, saw the armies gathered at their doorstep, Bilbo had always had the best eyesight of the Company. The clearest, and furthest reaching.

Theirs, however, had clouded with a golden haze.

Behind him, the Dwarves pulled armour and weapons from their archival places. Metal clashed together, and blades clanged against wall and floor.

That, with the low, dull murmuring of the Dwarves, made a melody. A requiem.

It echoed through the halls, passed the columns and arches, sunk into the carven stone. It vibrated within coin and gem, bloomed at the end of each hallway and swept up each staircase. Bilbo could not have escaped it if he tried.

A song of the Mountain. And a song for the King beneath it.

Bilbo tilted his head back, let his long curls hang around his shoulders. The ceiling, high and looming, replaced the sky. It could not compare, though, and he found he sorely missed the stars. Those that twinkled as the Company slept under them he remembered fondest.

With a flicker of shock, Bilbo wondered if he’d ever see them again.

But the sky and the stars that dotted it were not the only things that were missing.

There was no wind.

No breeze.

No life, here, deep under the earth.

In this _tomb_.

“My forebearers called it Mithril,” Thorin said. His eyes were glazed – as they often were. Like a murky pond. Or a polluted river. Bilbo could barely remember their ocean-blue, anymore.

The Dwarf raised a spread of silvery metal. It glimmered in the torchlight – pure, like starlight.

Bilbo had never been so glad to see something not gold.

Almost.

Bilbo, although unskilled and uneducated in the art of Dwarves, still knew that something did not need the face of gold to be valued as such. Thorin’s eyes, how they fixed upon the metal with a _dragon_ like intensity, told him as much.

Bilbo attempted a smile. The skin of his face felt stiff. Stretched. Like leather to the point of tearing.

The Dwarf King stood before him, donned to the teeth with geometric, metal scales. In the hallway, a torch had been lit, but it glinted off his amour deformed, and distorted.

Bilbo found a Hobbit in the breastplate’s reflection. He barely recognised him.

“I- I… I don’t need such a gift,” he said, voice pushed through his teeth like sand. It sounded strained, even to him.

Something in Thorin’s eyes flickered. Like a flame. Whether to warm or burn, Bilbo couldn’t guess. Couldn’t care.

_Burn me,_ he thought bitterly. _Do it- just- do something that isn’t about this bloody gold._

“Meet me at the front gates,” was all the Dwarf said, shoving the silver shirt into the Hobbit’s arms. He gave Bilbo one last look – murky eyes wide, like a maw, teeth barred and shining like _the scales on his body-_

Then he turned and walked away, metal boots falling heavy on the stone.

Bilbo watched him go, heart heavier.

The Arkenstone was an ugly thing.

Yes, it glittered with an inner light, and it seemed to hum within his hands. Its mask was wonderous, all-encompassing and consuming. Balin hadn’t been lying when he’d told Bilbo _he’d know_ when he’d found it, buried among the gold and glimmer. Just as prophesied, Bilbo had known instantly, had felt it in his blood.

He’d felt triumph, then.

But he saw through its material deceit.

He saw its malevolence. Its _disease_.

Even if he was alone in doing so.

It had brought something ill, something _sick_ from the depths of the mountain. Something worse than Smaug. Something stronger.

Bilbo felt it in the stale air, in the cold stone. Felt it as the Company’s eyes passed over him like blindmen.

He felt it whenever he walked by that _damned_ treasury – he could no longer enter it.

But he felt it strongest whenever Thorin laid his eyes upon him. Whenever the Thorin Bilbo had met in Bag End slipped away and _the King Under the Mountain_ surged forth.

It strangled him with phantom hands. Powerless, to him. But no less a threat. It found him in his waking hours, in his sleep, in his musings and his tears. It suffocated him.

He wished to find his way through the rubble and ruin of Erebor, to find its highest balcony. He dreamt of hurling the Arkenstone from its great height. He fantasized of watching its shining façade fall, powerless against the pull of the earth as it sped down Erebor’s great cliffs.

He yearned to watch it _shatter_.

But there were enemies outside their door. And enemies – no matter their hate for the Company – could be bargained with.

Thorin’s hands dangle Bilbo above the front gates.

They shake him, tugging at his coat and ripping its seams.

The Dwarves around them struggle and thrash. They shout and wrap their thick fingers around them both. Panic possesses their faces, clears their eyes.

But all Bilbo can see is he _his face_.

Teeth, pointed and barred, let snarled threats and insults emerge from a heating throat. Eyes – _so unclear and hazed_ – narrow on him, full with disgust and rimmed with rage. The crown still sits upon his dark brow and tangled hair.

It is a cheap mockery.

The wind and cold whip at them. Elsewhere there is shouting, high in the voices of Elves and Men.

But all he sees is-

“Thorin.”

(Broken, pulled from his aching chest in a whimper.)

And then Bilbo is falling.

Above him Thorin stands, eyes wide. Two handfuls of Bilbo’s coat fill his fits.

The Dwarves grow smaller.

One reaches for him. Too late.

Bilbo stares up at the Mountain. At its King.

He could almost smile at the irony.

Bilbo does not shatter.

Instead, he _crunches._


End file.
